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The one game system Yumi will actually play is $50 cheaper now. The Nintendo Wii is the family-friendly alternative to slashing aliens and zombies with chainsaws on your TV. I’m not sure what the non-family-friendly alternative would be…

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Last night, I finished a demo video on the 2.0 upgrade. For some reason I went to bed forgetting to upload it to Youtube. Having cleared my head, it is up this morning.

I tried something new this time. I used my wife’s iPhone to record the video while I played the app on my iPhone. I was surprised that the video was pretty good quality (of course Youtube reduces it some). It worked and it was much easier than setting up a tripod and extracting the video from my video camera.

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iTunes Connect is where iPhone developers go to upload their apps, descriptions, and images to the Apple iPhone App Store. For the past two or three days iTunes Connect has been extremely slow if not downright unresponsive. To get a feel for how this has affected people, run a search for “iTunes Connect” on Twitter. One poor guy had his payment deposited in a wrong bank because he couldn’t log in to change the account information in time.

Thankfully, it seems to be back up and faster than ever. iTunes Connect has always been excruciatingly slow; this new youthful speed is quite welcomed.

BUT

I uploaded (speedily, I might add) new icons for two of my apps and… now both apps show broken images in the App Store. I logged back into iTunes Connect, repeated the upload, clicked on the preview image, and was greeted with:

Not Found

The requested URL /Purple/32/00/ab/mzl.xfpdvdni.512×512-75.jpg was not found on this server.

Apple has fixed one issue while breaking something else. Sounds like my three year old–only without the fixing part.

—

UPDATE: I probably spoke too soon. I got in touch with a nice guy at Apple involved with the fix. He told me he could see the images and suggested the problem was cached. Sure enough after a few hours the images showed up for me too. So… never mind. 🙂

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This is a major moment for us–a kind of Let’s Pat Ourselves On Our Backs During Our Group Hug Session:

Our original iPhone / iPod Touch application, Japanese Phrases for Beginners, has been given a major upgrade. It is now Japanese Phrases AND Lessons. We spent months and thousands of dollars making this the best app it can be (until we discover the next best thing!). If you have the app, PLEASE email or call me if you have any comments, suggestions, or spot any errors. (2.0.1 is being uploaded today with a few of those bug fixes!)

We launched 1.0 in February, 2009 with about 800 phrases. Through versions 1.1 to 1.4 we inched up the phrases to about 1,100. This single upgrade doubles the phrases to over 2,200 all with audio recorded by a native speaker.

The biggest addition is the 250 or so lesson pages. 2.0 ships with Hiragana Lessons, Katakana Lessons, 100 mini-grammar lessons, and several other more in-depth grammar lessons. Every page has several example sentences all with audio at the tap of a finger. We will be adding new lessons in the next few weeks.

NEW FEATURES

Japanese Phrases App

We added a random feature for those who like to gamble.

For the detail oriented, we added a search feature.

The Study Bank allows the user to save or “favorite” phrases to study later or to email the entire list to print out. You can also email any phrase from that phrase’s study page.

Lesson Pages — over 250 pages of lessons now; more on the way

Enhanced graphics — Lots of new eye-candy

Double the sound files — now over 2,200! We also remastered most of the older audio files.